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60 Ruins, the world...

Neutral Dimension
Somewhere in the U.S.
10:03 AM

[POV of Jason]

The Mysterious man and I walked along the metal beam, it was slick in certain spots. We then crawled into the fallen building through a window, the tech inside still looked fresh... yet ransacked. We walked down the walls of the hallway where pictures of former workers lay in crushed glass. Ashes lay throughout the hallways, the sides of the building had craters where the sunlight came through. The Mysterious man then helped me scale the walls towards the door in which we exited. The sun shined down upon my face as if I hadn't seen it in a million years, the builing was wet, but from a mist... not snow. Infact, it felt like it was 50°F outside, and not winter. I climbed down the pipings and concrete of the fallen building to reveal a ruined city, it looked like cyber-punk met post-apocalyptia. Cars that ran on electricity were covered in vines and the fiber-aluminum based bodies warped from the sun and dampness. Cracks were along the road and had small streams of water running through them, the ashes remain but had nearly been washed away.

Mysterious Man: Like what ya see?
Me (Jason): Looks like a lost civilization... Like Atlantis or something.
Mysterious Man: never throught someone would say that 'hortus voluptatis' looked like a lost civilization.
Me (Jason): This, this is the garden of Eden?
Mysterious man: a version of it. It is like, from what I read, like your L.A., New York, Chicago, and Kansas City put into a mixing pot minus the crime and government.
Me (Jason): I can barely fathom this... What year is it here.
Mysterious Man: Time never had existed here, one chooses to age, infact I have been 58 for 3000 years. But, beside that point... we never had a set date, which would drive most insane... but not us. We accept it and went about our lives in what would seem to be normal lives... Until the Rapture.
Me (Jason): wh...
Mysterious Man: shh, we are not alone, we need to stay moving... no more talking.

I heard the rattling of a can down the street, we moved quickly down the sides of buildings away from the noise. I felt a feeling of dread that I could not shake, my body was becoming more emotional for some reason. We then walked into an old music store, there had been Mozart playing through the streets, it was more eerie than usual though. The music store had records and CDs falling off the shelves and the roof had long since caved in, the ash was ankle deep in places. We the scaled on the ruined roof until we got to an abandoned hotel building, alot of windows had been broken out, the building itself had to be atleast 30 stories tall. We walked down the hallways, the set lined with streaks of dampness and cracks. The Mysterious man then stopped me, he opened a door to one of the rooms, a peppery sensation burnt my nose but so did the smell of stale death. I looked on the bed to see the dried brown skin and brown stained sheets, the the white shit faded yellow and the tie was disheveled. The long fingernails and dried hands grasping the shotgun as the warshak of sprayed blood and bits of skull had made and artform all over the white wall behind him.

Mysterious man: *whispers* like me, this man was left behind, try not to wake the dead.

He then pulled my eyes away from the horrible sight and closed the door. We continued up stairs until we got to the top floor, we then walked slowly towards a room at the end of the hall. The Mysterious man pulled out a key chain that had every key engulfed in a rubber silencer, he then unlocked the 7 locks and opened the heavy metal door. Once inside he quickly closed the door and locked all seven locks and pushed all the other bolts shut. He then lit a karoseen lamp in the middle of the room, the light revealed a large room filled with random knic-knacks from odd things.

Mysterious man: never for any reason are you to open the coverings of those windows, I have them covered with tarps and blankets for a reason.
Me (Jason): Do you live here?
Mysterious Man: yeah, have been since I got here. Do you want some coffee?
Me (Jason): sure...
Mysterious Man: I'll put some on...
Me (Jason): what did you do... before the Rapture?
Mysterious Man: hmm, I was a... *breaths in deep*... Librarian at the historical Institute.
Me (Jason): so violence was not originally part of your past time.
Mysterious Man: it is amazing how easily violence can come to a pacifist when they are delt with a bad hand. There never really is peace in a human, like animals we are willing to act peaceful... but only when it suits us.
Me (Jason): what bad hand were you delt?
Mysterious Man: *stops*...
Me (Jason): sorry...
Mysterious Man: no... it is just the pain of remembering. I'll make the story short, single dad, someone took daughter, I killed them, too late... they broke her neck... she was only seven... I hung the last man, got my ticket punched. I lost everything that mattered, now... I am just a huntsman. I give peace back to those who suffered similar fates, and punish those who chose to live after such crimes.

He then poured the coffee into a metal cup and handed it to me, the coffee was a little stronger than I was expecting but packed a punch at the same time. I looked around and saw he had a collection of lighters, I pulled out my old Nazi lighter and handed it to the man, his face lit up as he put it up with the others.